Opinion | Features

Enough with the cooking shows already says media trading director Sam Tedesco. The market saturation is not doing anything positive for the ratings.
Like most members of the Australian TV viewing audience, I love a good cooking show. Right now, though, I need a break from high-pressure personality-driven food formats.

In this opinion piece Kevin Fitzsimons argues SBS documentary Go Back to Where You Came From demonstrates how people will accept ideas more readily when they are shown them.
‘People don’t do conceptual,’ was one of the best pieces of advice I received early on in my marketing career.
It took a while for me to grasp the value of the advice and even longer to apply it.

Australia's biggest supermarket is struggling. Steve Jones spoke to industry experts about how Woolworths' marketing strategy has faltered, and whether the brand can revive its fortunes.
When Woolworths chief executive Grant O’Brien fell on his sword last month after another disappointing set of quarterly figures, it surprised no one.
Without a chief marketer following the abrupt dismissal of Tony Phillips – and with several other high profile executives exiting stage left in recent months – it was just another in a long line of senior level departures at the embattled supermarket.

Media commentators not condemning the booing of AFL star Adam Goodes are effectively condoning bullying argues Adam Ferrier.
I have always admired Adam Goodes. Dual Brownlow medallist, premiership player, Australian of the Year, continued good work for indigenous people. He certainly deserves respect. Don’t know if I like him or not though, never met the guy.
However, Alan Jones commented on the issue recently and said the reason Goodes is getting booed is just that, ‘Because they just don’t like the fellow’.
What a damaging thing to say, and surely it’s not as simple as that?

After recently switching to ING Direct Ian Sizer says the current ad campaign for the online bank is seriously making him consider switching back.
When you get an ad appearing every single ad break it can be irritating. Some ads though go way beyond irritating and become so infuriating it can totally bugger up your evening.
That’s what happened to me last weekend when my viewing was interrupted on a regular basis by the latest offering from ING Direct.

While storytelling has become one of adland's biggest buzzwords Rob Lowe argues marketers are failing to make the necessary emotional connections.
I remember first hearing people talk about ‘storytelling’ a few years ago. I never quite understood it then and I still don’t fully understand the term now.
In fact, like many others, I think it’s overused marketing jazz.

Ahead of the launch of Seven's new reality format Restaurant Revolution tonightAngely Grecia crunches the numbers to see what sort of a buzz the show is creating on Twitter.
The Restaurant Revolution - the new foodie reality TV-show that sees ordinary Aussies designing and running their own pop-up restaurant to win a grand prize of $200,000 - is alive and well on social media.

Despite all the hype the news dinosaurs still dominate the plains of online news in Australia argues The New Daily editorial director Bruce Guthrie in an address to the Rural Press Club.
One way or another, as a journalist and editor, I’ve had a front-row seat at the migration of news from print to online over the past 20 years. And whenever I reflect on that sometimes painful, often clumsy process I am reminded of the joke about the man who walks into a bar with a frog sitting on his head.

In this opinion piece Mumbrella's Alex Hayes argues Lexus' new Heartbeat Car stunt will not raise the pulses of ordinary punters.
I have to admit the new 'world first' Lexus 'Heatbeat Car' leaves me cold.
It comes across as technology for technology's sake - they could have achieved the same results with CGI.

In this guest post, Shabaz Hussain wonders what a posh British drink’s surprise social media win at Wimbledon says about sports sponsorship for brands.
According to a recent Brand Intelligence Report from Amobee the brand most associated with The Championships at Wimbledon in 2015 across social and digital is Pimm’s – a traditional cocktail drink that spectators enjoy at the event.
What makes this more interesting is that fact that they were not an official sponsor of The Championships.

With more than $200m of business in play in Australia due to global pitches. But David Angell asks whether swapping partners will achieve much for these multinationals.
Do you watch soap operas? Of course you don’t, you’re all busy executives with crippling workloads.
But I bet most of you can remember them from younger days.

While some of the figures in the latest RECMA rankings are questionable Nic Christensen argues they still provide an interesting insight on the state of the media industry.
There's something about the RECMA numbers that just does not make sense. But when you ask a bunch of agencies to tell you how much they spend every year you're likely to get some very interesting results.
But despite the inconsistencies they are still the best map of media agencyland, are provide insights around the challenges of staff churn, the rise of programmatic and the broader challenge of falling client spend which are actually quite telling.

The way that blogger and influencer outreach is currently being executed is fast becoming unsustainable, and the industry should be worried argues Louisa Claire
When bloggers began sharing the brands they loved and used in their everyday lives, readers found their endorsement authentic and relatable; it came from someone “just like them”. Research found such backing from “real people” was more successful in swaying purchasing decisions than celebrity endorsements, and marketers opened their eyes to a massive opportunity to leverage bloggers’ voices.
The concept of blogger outreach was born.

smh.com.au takes top place in rankings as Daily Mail and Guardian continue to surge

The latest online news numbers have seen smh.com.au topple news.com.au for the first time this year while the new local operations of UK newspapers the Mail Online and The Guardian have posted record audience results.

The May numbers saw traffic surge on the back of federal budget coverage with the numbers suggesting that more than 10 million Australians accessing a news website with the smh.com.au, ABC and The Guardian, the main beneficiaries of the increases.

Nielsen gathers its numbers based on a combination of a representative panel of c0nsumers and tracking codes on web sites.

The result for Daily Mail Australia also comes amid a growing fight with News Corp over copyright, with both sides throwing accusations of plagiarism and poorly attributed use of copy and images at each other.

While News Corp’s news.com.au and Herald Sun both saw month-on-month online declines in audience, both the Courier Mail and the Daily Telegraph recorded increases. The Courier Mail was up 14 per cent to 1.72m while the Telegraph was up 10 per cent 1.66m. The Australian was up 15 per cent month-on-month with an audience of 1.38m.

Other players such as Buzzfeed and The Conversation both also posted increases, with the US viral site up 12 per cent with 1.63m while the university funded news website, which only entered the Nielsen rankings last month, was up 44 per cent with an audience of 446,000.

In terms of engagement news.com.au has the longest time per person with an hour one hour and 27 minutes per month while The Age was second with one hour and 21 minutes followed by smh.com.au on one hour and two minutes.

Nielsen has also released online data for the food category which had a unique audience of 6.2 million in May and showed News Corp’s taste.com.au was the leader with a unique audience of 2.2m, while Domino’s Pizza is fourth in the category.

Comments

Charlie
16 Jun 14
8:13 am

Is this the start of audience leaking from news.com to the Mail Online – hardly surprising since they both pursue the same brand of schlock journalism. News corp is obviously worried – hence their frenzied campaign against the Mail for plagiarism (even though News are clearly guilty of the same practice).

Stan the man
16 Jun 14
10:55 am

I wonder if smh numbers are helped by people clearing their cookies to get around their paywall. Regardless , I agree with Charlie that the arrival of the Mail Online will (possibly already is) hurt news.com more than any other site. News.com have taken a leaf right out of the MO playbook (ie very little real news, an obsession with celebrity gossip and clickbait yarns) so it now comes down to who does that best.

Forest Nahm
16 Jun 14
11:02 am

On you smh. Goes to show Fairfax are on the right path. The editorial team there remain committed to quality and the audience follows.

argo
16 Jun 14
12:12 pm

While one monthly result does not a trend make, that is a sizable gap that smh has opened up on news.com.au — and all the more significant, given smh is a paywalled site (ie restricted access) while news.com.au is not.

Nic
16 Jun 14
2:13 pm

so who gets to call Rupert?

You might also like
16 Jun 14
2:20 pm

I think that the SMH will stay well ahead of The Guardian while The Guardian continues to send users to SMH through “More from around the web” links at the bottom of all articles.

I don’t see the sense in this. Could someone explain?

Steve
16 Jun 14
2:51 pm

Great win by SMH by a state publication vs a national.

My insulin levels are falling back to normal now News’ over sweet journalistic junkies are finally being bailed up by the low GI and sustainably responsible journalism of Fairfax!!

Linking out to SMH and other publications from related articles, as with referring to sources via hyperlink, is part of the practice of Open Journalism, http://www.theguardian.com/media/open-journalism . All major news sites in Australia have recently blocked this kind of linking to theguardian.com but we are committed to our readers rather than our shareholders ( a benefit of not having any) ; so we will continue to link out where it is relevant and useful to our readers.

Anonymous
18 Jun 14
8:09 am

Um, I’m pretty sure the links from The Guardian to others through “More from around the web” are CPC ads and not an altruistic approach – revenue rather than anything else?

@ Anonymous: You’re right — these are indeed links to other sites for which the Guardian gets paid per click. They’re supplied by a third party called Outbrain. You’ll see same thing on Fairfax and News sites, also supplied by Outbrain. Most publishers don’t allow links to what could be termed competitor sites, but the Guardian doesn’t seem to have such qualms. Many of the links in its “More from around the web” section are to Fairfax sites….

John Grono
28 Jun 14
5:57 pm

Hi Hi.

In a nutshell the Nielsen Online Ratings uses a panel of around 8,000 people to ‘convert’ the traffic data (collected via tags) into audience ratings. That is, it derives duplication rates, age/gender profiles etc. A panel will always under-report audiences because of issues with sampling organisations like banks, government, defence, as well as public place access such as schools, universities, coffee shops, airport lounges etc. Conversely, a tag based system will always over-report audiences because of cookie deletion, location duplication (home and work access) and device duplication (PC, laptop, smartphone, tablet).

Lots of people fall for the trap of comparing their internal website metrics – which is traffic and not audience – with the Online Ratings which is measuring audience.

Mumbrella is bound by the standards of practice of the Australian Press Council. If you believe the standards may have been breached, you may approach Mumbrella itself or contact the council by email at info@presscouncil.org.au or by phone (02) 9261 1930.For further information see www.presscouncil.org.au